Effective Ways To Reward Your Online Brand Ambassadors

Converting your company’s fans into online brand ambassadors has proven to be a highly effective way of increasing organic engagement, and in turn sales. It’s not a new revelation that referrals and word of mouth recommendations have enormous positive influence on people’s buying decisions.

Imagine you could create a wide-reaching, loyal group of people who would recommend your brand, humanise your product and share and engage with your brand’s content online.

This is where brand ambassadors come in.

By offering rewards, especially to your top performing brand ambassadors, you will be giving them a worthwhile motive to continue recommending your brand.

Below are a few ideas on what incentives to offer your top performing brand ambassadors, as well as other faithful followers.

What To Reward Your Top Performing Brand Ambassadors?

Your top brand ambassadors deserve an exclusive reward just for them. Here are our top 4 suggestions.

1. Free or discounted products

There is no incentive quite like a freebie. You already know your brand ambassadors value your product, so sending them something for free, or even at a substantial discount, is an excellent way to show your appreciation.

However, it’s important to remember that the freebies you offer should be related to your company. For example, Nike might give a big discount on their latest range, language school owners might think about offering top ambassadors a free summer course, and a food delivery service like Glovo might offer free delivery or restaurant vouchers.

Not only does this approach guarantee that your brand ambassador will like the gift, but it also serves as a ‘tester’ to be reviewed; your brand ambassador will interact with your product and likely comment and share their thoughts about it. This won’t happen if you send them an unrelated gift, or another company’s product.

2. Exclusive Access and Limited Editions

Who doesn’t like being first in line? One way to reward your top ambassadors is letting them cut the line and be the first to try out your new service or product at a discount. If you sell something physical, you could even give your top ambassadors a limited edition product. If it’s a new service you’re offering you can also provide free onboarding. There are lots of ways to make people feel special!

The great thing about giving people something new and exclusive is that they will tell everyone about it. So your best ambassadors will be even more inclined to share your message with their networks in future.

3. Free Knowledge

Knowledge is invaluable, which is why we recommend you reward your top performing brand ambassadors with exclusive, free content.

This could take the form of a free e-book, video series or podcast about a topic that is both related to your brand and of interest to your brand ambassador.

You could also offer a thought-provoking article or report. By sharing results from recent research you carried out, for example, you can offer value and value and insight to your ambassadors.

If you don’t have these resources at your disposal, you could still offer a dedicated webinar or even a free consultation for one high performing ambassador – depending on what your audience would find most exciting.

4. Give them exposure

If your top brand ambassador has a company or product of their own, there is no better way to show you appreciate them like giving them exposure as they have done for you. You could give them the next slot in your blog schedule either to guest blog or do an interview piece about them and give them free reign to talk about their company or product of choice.

Why and How To Reward All Your Brand Ambassadors?

Since humans are incentive-motivated creatures, it is important to offer rewards to all your brand ambassadors in order to keep them feeling valued.

In the same 2016 Nielsen Study, 88% of people questioned said they would need an incentive to share, like or recommend a brand’s product on social media (again, this number jumps to 95% among 18-35 year olds).

In order to not pass up the opportunity to build a loyal community, here are a few ways to reward your entire army of brand ambassadors.

1. Exclusive Content

While you should save the free e-book or the really valuable insights for your top brand ambassadors, giving exclusive content that isn’t available for all your customers to the rest of your brand ambassador team is a great customer retention strategy.

Weekly newsletters with links to interesting and relevant articles, with information about your new and upcoming product releases and with a simple hello from you to your brand ambassadors, go a long way.

2. Access to opportunities

Community networking events are appealing to anyone who wants to broaden their horizons and increase their social and professional reach. If your company organises a event or product launch party, why not invite your brand ambassadors first? Even better than a discount, give them a free entrance and a discount code so they can bring their friends or colleagues.

3. Exposure & Recognition

Even if you’re offering a blog post to a top brand ambassador, you can still give a shout out, an @ or a tweet promoting something your individual community members have posted or launched recently. It shows them you recognise their loyalty and hard work by giving them or their product much needed exposure.

Your online brand ambassadors have a natural desire to share, to influence and to engage, which gives them much further reach than any of your other customers. To ensure they continue promoting and recommending your brand in a authentic way be sure to make them feel valuable, indispensable, and appreciated. How? Rewards.

Need help setting up your own brand ambassador reward campaign? Contact us and find out how you can boost your organic reach for free!